Saturday, December 19, 2015

The Soft Power of Militant Jihad

Image from article, with caption: In an Islamic State propaganda video, a Canadian, Andre Poulin, urged other to join the fight

Oslo — AFTER Abu Musab al­-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, the
predecessor to the Islamic State, reportedly beheaded the American hostage
Nicholas Berg in 2004, he became known in jihadi circles as the Slaughterer.
Few people in the West are aware that he also went by the nickname He Who
Weeps a Lot. Mr. Zarqawi was known for weeping during prayer and when
speaking about Muslim women’s suffering under occupation.

The Slaughterer’s brand of radical Islam was brutal even by jihadi
standards. Under Mr. Zarqawi’s command, Al Qaeda in Iraq executed so many
hostages and killed so many Shiite civilians that Al Qaeda’s leadership
reprimanded him. But in his public displays of emotion, He Who Weeps a Lotwas not an aberration. For radical Islamists who view crying as a sign ofdevotion to God, communal sobbing is as common as car bombing.

A foreign fighter in Syria who wrote a blog post in March about an imam
crying while making an invocation wrote that “brothers were crying with him,
some audible, and others would have their tears fall silently.” Jihadis alsoweep when listening to religious hymns, watching propaganda videos,discussing the plight of Sunni Muslims or talking about the afterlife. Someweep more than others, and those who do are looked up to by those who don’t.

Why have tens of thousands of people from around the world chosen tolive under the Islamic State’s draconian rule and fight under its black flag? Tounderstand this phenomenon, we must recognize that the world of radicalIslam is not just death and destruction. It also encompasses fashion, music,poetry, dream interpretation. In short, jihadism offers its adherents a richcultural universe in which they can immerse themselves.

For the past four years I have been studying what jihadis do in their spare
time. The idea is simple: To really understand a community, we need to look at
everything its members do. Using autobiographies, videos, blog posts, tweets
and defectors’ accounts, I have sought a sense of the cultural dimensions of
jihadi activism. What I have discovered is a world of art and emotions. While
much of it has parallels in mainstream Muslim culture, these militants have
put a radical ideological spin on it.

When jihadis aren’t fighting — which is most of the time — they enjoystorytelling and watching films, cooking and swimming. The social
atmosphere (at least for those who play by the rules) is egalitarian, affectionate
and even playful. Jihadi life is emotionally intense, filled with the thrill of
combat, the sorrow of loss, the joy of camaraderie and the elation of religious
experience. I suspect this is a key source of its attraction.

The corridors of jihadi safe houses are filled with music or, moreprecisely, a cappella hymns (since musical instruments are forbidden) knownas anashid. There’s nothing militant about this traditional genre, which dates
from pre­Islamic times. But in the 1970s, Islamists began composing their own
ideological songs about their favored themes. Today there are thousands of
jihadi songs in circulation, with new tunes being added every month. Jihadis
can’t seem to get enough anashid. They listen to them in their dorms and in
their cars, sing them in training camps and in the trenches, and discuss them
on Twitter and Facebook. Some use them to mentally prepare for operations:
Ayoub El Khazani, a 25­-year-­old Moroccan man who attempted a shooting
attack on a Paris­-bound train in August, listened to YouTube videos of jihadi
anashid just minutes before his failed operation.Anashid are closely related to poetry, another staple of jihadi culture.Across the Arab and Islamic world, poetry is much more widely appreciatedthan it is in the West. Militants, though, have used the genre to their own ends.
Over the past three decades or so, jihadi poets have developed a vast body of
radical verse. Leaders from the Islamic State’s spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani
to Al Qaeda’s Ayman al­-Zawahri often include lines of poetry in their
speeches and treatises. Foot soldiers in Syria and Iraq sometimes hold
impromptu poetry performances or group recitals in the field.

In any large jihadi group there might be a few people who specialize in
composing or memorizing poems. These poets can be anyone from within the
movement, men or women of any rank. The Islamic State’s most famous poet
is a Syrian woman in her 20s who goes by the name Ahlam al­-Nasr, or Dreams
of Victory. (While jihadi women generally socialize separately from men, the
Internet has allowed women to take a more active part in the movement’s
cultural life.) Her most famous collection, “Blaze of Truth,” contains lines such
as “Shake the throne of the cross, and Extinguish the fire of the Zoroastrians /
Strike down every adversity, and go reap those heads.”

Perhaps more important than poems for jihadis are dreams, which theybelieve can contain instructions from God or premonitions of the future. Both
leaders and foot soldiers say they sometimes rely on nighttime visions for
decision making. Omar Hammami, the Alabama­-born man who fought with
the Shabab in Somalia in the late 2000s, said he thought of defecting, “but it
was really a few dreams that tipped the scales and caused me to stay.” Mullah
Omar, the mysterious one­-eyed Taliban leader who died in 2013, reportedly
made no consequential strategic decision before getting advice from his
dreams.Jihadi culture also comes with its own sartorial styles. In Europe, radicals
sometimes wear a combination of sneakers, a Middle Eastern or Pakistani
gown and a combat jacket on top. It’s a style that perhaps reflects their urban
roots, Muslim identity and militant sympathies. The men often follow Salafietiquette, for example by carrying a tooth-­cleaning twig known as a miswak,wearing nonalcoholic perfume, and avoiding gold jewelry, as they believe theProphet Muhammad did.

As new recruits shed their jeans and track suits for robes, as they
memorize the words to the Islamic State’s anashid and learn to look for
glimpses of paradise in dreams, they discover a whole new lifestyle. Music,rituals and customs may be as important to jihadi recruitment as theologicaltreatises and political arguments. Yes, some people join radical groups becausethey want to escape personal problems, avenge Western foreign policy or obeya radical doctrine. But some recruits may join because they find a culturalcommunity and a new life that is emotionally rewarding.

As the West comes to terms with a new and growing threat — horrificallyevident in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. — we are notonly confronting organizations and doctrines, but also a highly seductivesubculture. This is bad news. Governments are much better equipped to takeon the Slaughterer than they are He Who Weeps a Lot.Thomas Hegghammer is director of terrorism research at theNorwegian Defense Research Establishment.

About Me

A Princeton PhD, was a US diplomat for over 20 years, mostly in Eastern Europe, and was promoted to the Senior Foreign Service in 1997. For the Open World Leadership Center, he speaks with
its delegates from Europe/Eurasia on the topic, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United" (http://johnbrownnotesandessays.blogspot.com/2017/03/notes-and-references-for-discussion-e.html). Affiliated with Georgetown University (http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/jhb7/) for over ten years, he still shares ideas with students about public diplomacy.
The papers of his deceased father -- poet and diplomat John L. Brown -- are stored at Georgetown University Special Collections at the Lauinger Library. They are manuscript materials valuable to scholars interested in post-WWII U.S.-European cultural relations.
This blog is dedicated to him, Dr. John L. Brown, a remarkable linguist/humanist who wrote in the Foreign Service Journal (1964) -- years before "soft power" was ever coined -- that "The CAO [Cultural Affairs Officer] soon comes to realize that his job is really a form of love-making and that making love is never really successful unless both partners are participating."